IE8 Home page

Release Notes

IEBlogs:
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 Now Available
Upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2
Introducing Compatibility View

Download:
Windows XP
Windows Server 2003 SP2
Windows Server 2003 SP2 x64 & Windows XP x64
Windows Vista and Server 2008
Windows Vista x64 and Server 2008 x64

Thx

This looks like a very interesting build... finally some very decent competition in the browser market!

Batfink

Saweeeeeeeeeet!

thanks

Cheers

Downloading now.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Thanks for the linkage!

Vista x64 link doesn't currently work.

Edit: Now the download page loads, but the download link doesn't work...
Edit2: Now the download link works...

Didn't work for me earlier but now it does...

finally! and a day earlier than expected at that

Thanks for the heads up. I haven't been personally testing the betas yet but the information/reviews around IE 8 keeps me interested.

It didn't work in Fx for me but worked in IE.

Does the 64 bit link install the 64 bit and 32 bit version?

check out ieblog http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/

oh snap... never saw this but "inPrivate" browsing is pretty nifty

Weird, i had my first crash - inPrivate browsing caused it! Bad sexy twins, bad!!! LOL

When i do "CTRL + SHIFT + P" it takes a lil while before it opens, maybe like 20 seconds or something and i've restarted too!

Thanks!
I've added links to the 3 new blog posts from today covering Beta 2.

Thank you! Downloading right row

I've downloaded/installed beta 2 of IE 8; now let's see if it holds up as a daily-use browser.

I am switching back to IE all features sound awesome

Isn't slow to load for me. Then again, I'm on my fairly beefy work machine.

Pages load ridiculously slow though.

Edit: Nevermind, that's just Neowin that's ridiculously slow.

yeah rendering is very slow, still i didn't expect anything else from a debug build beta features look good though, let's see if they can improve rendering when the final is done

Wow. Those are some nice changes. Can't wait to use this!

could someone verify this page: http://www.video-palace.com/

it's a standard compliant site I made, loads perfect in opera, firefox and ie7. IE8 shows a blank page

Firstly, night and day compared to IE beta 1. Browsing websites without compatibility mode on is now usable. And compatibility mode is far more elegant.

Rendering speed seems to be relatively similar to IE7 except for the odd site (like Neowin). Might be something specific its struggling with. I know they've said there will be more performance improvements before RTM. PNG Alpha performance is better than IE7, as is scrolling performance with statically positioned elements.

Not a fan of the color coded tabs. I know what they're trying to do but I can't help but think theres gotta be a more elegant way of accomplishing this.

inPrivate loads instantly for me. Haven't tried it enough to comment on its stability. Haven't tried Suggested Sites and don't believe I will use this feature much.

yes, finally ie has it's own source editor/viewer! no more notepad

Wow, very impressive! Loads up very quickly on my Vista laptop, faster than IE7 even!!

Was hoping for more of a change to the UI but it doesn't look too bad now that its been tweaked.

InPrivate Browsing is a fantastic feature!

For me that site still is saying please wait. It hsan't loaded yet and therefore still showing a blank screen.

EDIT - i hit the compatability icon and it loaded instantly. When i have it in IE8 mode though it doesn't load at all.

I don't understand why they've added more padding to the "website contains error" (facebook no less) dialogue when they should have spent time making it more details and informative.

alright woohoo

Nice! Gonna try it in my XP SP3 VM right now.

Not bad, the private browsing did start out slow but now its normal.

yeah, now i have to find out why, hopefully it's a bug in ie8 and not in my code (fingers crossed)

Oh well it fails the new acid test miserably! Try for yourself here...

What a shock!

Who cares, this is faster, prettier, smarter. The Acid test isn't everything.

Sweet. I'm downloading now.

who cares, they never aimed for css 3 compability in this release, neither are they ready to support canvas. It passes acid 2 with flying flags and aims for full css 2.1 compability. That's all i care about.

The developer features are great, full javascript debugging, dom tree, css tree, rulers, color picker and so on

WOW, so many new features!!! i'm sure firefox users will say they already have all this stuff but still a HUGE step forward.

i love the suggested sights feature. like stumbleupon

I tried it on my Vista machine and did not care for it. I also found out that the only way to remove it is through system restore.

Don't group us all together. I'm a die-hard Firefox user but I'm typing this inside of IE8 Beta 2 right now and I must say there are vast improvements over Beta 1 and even IE7. It's good to see Microsoft improving IE as much as they are! I'll likely keep Beta 2 installed as my secondary browser over IE7.

i like how they put the page compatibility button right on the address bar - under the USER's control. hopefully they'll default to the most strict mode and then when the user presses the button, go back some versions.
seems this IE version might be a good one, after all

you're wrong it's in the update list where you can remove it

Ok, let me get this right.
I am on vista 64 bit..downloaded the 64-bit version.
If I install this one, will it just update the 64 bit version of IE, or will both versions be updated??(cause in vista 64 you have the choice to run the 32 bit or the 64 bit. And I tend to choose the 32 bit version since 64 bit dont support flash just yet.)

It updates both

oh and the colour groups for tabs

Much better than beta 1, that's for sure. Now I can finally ditch Opera and go back to IE

You can move the refresh and stop buttons to be placed before the address bar... believe it or not i've heard a lot of people complain about that!

I'll see how this stacks up against Firefox 3.1, I still think Firefox will get it's next version out first, again.

colored tabs are great but look weird

Importing bookmarks from other browsers seems to be a bit flaky. When I tried it, some bookmarks were imported and others weren't. With that said, this is probably the first version of IE I've used and thought "Hmmm....this is quite nice!".

Thanks for the links.. Its a great build.. Plenty of improvements